Disclaimer: All the
opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone
and should not be construed to mean the opinions of any other person or
organization, unless explicitly stated otherwise in the article.

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Summary

This is
a first-hand account of how I was cheated today of my right to vote in the 2014
Indian election. It talks about how
various obstacles are placed and spurious conditions set by election officers to
(successfully) prevent people from registering to vote.

Introduction

Today, October 25, 2013, is the deadline for voters to
register for the general elections in 2014.
I have never voted in any election, so I was keen to vote for the first
time. Having been very busy with work
(October is the year-ending month of our yearly performance cycle in the
company I work in, so I get free of work pressure only in mid-October), I did
not have time to register as a voter earlier.
The deadline was earlier supposed to be October 16th, but it
had been extended to the 25th, ostensibly to allow more people to
register.

So I have been quite busy for the last week trying to get
myself registered to vote in India. As I
have discovered, this is not an endeavour for those faint of heart. And even for those, like me, who think they
are endowed with a sturdy heart, success is not guaranteed.

Absentee
Election Officers at the Polling Stations

The first step for me was to know what forms to submit and
where. The form to submit was fairly simple to obtain,
as were the instructions. Where they
were to be submitted was much trickier.
I asked two people – one, a colleague at work and the other, a neighbour
in the same housing society that I live in, as to where I am supposed to submit
this form. They were not fully clear on
the answer.

With a little digging on the internet, helped along with my
colleague at work, I made a reasonable assumption that the voting booth (where
I was told I needed to submit the form) for my residential area was a local
school in Thane, the DAV Public school in Tulshibaug, Thane (W). Accordingly, I went there a couple of times
to submit my forms, only to be told that the election officers who were
supposed to be at the booths from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm had not shown up for a
couple of days. I even got the number of
the officer from one of the guards there and called her, only to
be brusquely told in Marathi: “I am in Mantralaya. Call me later.” (Hangs up.)

I also spoke to my neighbour in the society, and he
helpfully said that one of the municipal councillors was staying in our
society, and also that all filled forms could be handed over to him and he
would take care of the submissions.
Consequently, when I spoke to the same neighbour a couple of days ago, I asked him if I
could give him the forms. He cautioned
me that I should ensure that I had adequate documentary evidence for everything
that I had mentioned – proof of identity, proof of address, etc. I replied that I had my landline telephone
bill – surely that should be enough? He
said they are being very strict, and it is better to supply two proofs of
address, because some forms were being rejected.

Having heard this, I decided it best to go to the office
myself, so I could handle any problems myself if they arose, rather than depend
on someone else to take care of them.
Since there were only two days to go, I didn’t want to take the chance
that the application forms might be rejected.

But before that, I thought I’d try the online voter
registration option that showed up on the election commission site. This started off well: you had to enter your
mobile number and you would get a verification code that you could then enter
into an online form for security, then follow up with all the details that the
paper Form 6 required. The proofs of
address and identity could be uploaded from your computer. But that’s when the process choked. Whenever I tried to click upload on either
the address or identity proofs, the process would give an error and exit. So much for trying to save myself some
legwork.

So I called around yesterday and talked to the municipal
corporation office. This yielded some helpful advice from the person
who answered the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) phone. He said that
voter registration falls under the ambit of the state government, not the TMC,
and so, given that 25th was the last date, my best bet was to go to
the Zilla Parishad Office (ZPO) near Thane Station and submit the form there.

The
Thane Zilla Parishad Office

So today, I dutifully took my forms, with two proofs of
residence to be sure, and as many additional proofs as I could gather, to make
sure there would be no basis for rejection of the forms. I was actually on sick leave today from the
office, as I was suffering from a mild fever, a severe sore throat, and a painful
cough, with phlegm threatening to choke me now and then, and had difficulty
even sitting up, but I thought that voting was so important that I would bear
the pain and exhaustion and still somehow register.

Finally got the strength to leave the home at 11.15 am, and
took an auto rickshaw to the ZPO. Got
there in about half an hour, and after asking around I found the place where
they were accepting voter registration forms.
Elated at having found the place, I went to one of the officers there
and submitted the forms for me and my wife.

The officer took a cursory look at the submitted forms and
then looked at the supporting proofs. He
said, “these proofs are not attested as true-copy. This won’t do.” I said okay and asked him if there was
someone nearby who would do the job.
Sure enough, he said there’s a chap right outside the gate who will do
the needful. So I went there and the
chap got all my papers stamped as true copy.
I gave him Rs. 20 for the trouble.

Incidentally, the rules in the form state that proof of age is required only when the stated age is between 18 and 25:

Figure 1: Stipulations on Requiring Documentary Proof of Age in Form 6

Know
your “Part!”

Now I’m all set, I told myself. I walked briskly and excitedly back to the
desk of the officer with whom I had spoken earlier and laid the forms with the
true-copy attestation on his desk. He
went through the details of what I had filled in the form, came to the section
that said, “Details of applicant’s family already included in the current
electoral roll of the constituency.” (see Figure below).

Figure 2: Details of Family Members Already Enrolled (from Form 6)

He
asked me why I had left it blank. I said
none of my family members were included in the electoral roll of this
constituency. He said, no, no, that will
not do. We need to have some reference
there. If not your family, the name of
someone from your area, your building, etc., SHOULD be mentioned there,
otherwise we cannot accept your form. I
told him the rules did not specify that, but he would not listen. He said it was a requirement and that without
that, they could not accept the form.

See the relevant instructions for this section and decide
for yourself if any names NEED to be entered there. In fact, the rules specifically state that
names of people other than immediate family members should NOT be entered.

Figure 3: Instuctions for Filling Up Family Member Details in Form 6

Anyway, now that he had laid down the law for accepting the
form, I had to comply. So I asked him
where I’d find the names of people to put down on the form. To this, he said, do you know which “part”
you belong to? I said no, I don’t. He asked me for my address again, and then
said, well, why don’t you check 62 first?

This needs some explanation.
Turns out that I live in Thane Lok Sabha (Union Parliament lower house) constituency,
and the Thane Lok Sabha constituency, in turn, consists of six legislative assembly
constituencies: Mira-Bhayander, Ovala-Majiwada, Kopri-Panchpakhadi, Thane,
Belapur, and Airoli. Each of these
legislative constituencies, in turn, is divided into hundreds of “parts.” The Thane legislative constituency, for
instance, consists of 353 “parts.” What
this chap was asking ME was to tell HIM which part I belonged to of those 353.

Should this burden be on the common man?
To help me, he said they have full printouts of all the voters in each
part, and I could go ahead and check which part my housing society’s address
falls in. I said I had been told that
the polling station for us was in DAV Public School in Tulshidham. Oh, he said, why didn’t you say so, and then
pulled out the full printout for that part (each of which is as big as a
telephone directory, with the names, photographs, addresses, and elector Ids of
every citizen in that part.) After
looking through that, he says to me, “your housing society is not mentioned
here.”

The amazing thing is that I was not alone in doing this. The whole office was full of people who were poring through these huge books, trying to locate their housing areas and identify people who they could put down as references in the forms - a requirement that had NOT EVEN BEEN SPECIFIED in the instructions!

The officer then calls up the lady
election officer who is supposed to be in charge of the DAV polling station to ask her if my society indeed belongs to that station. She replies in the negative. He then suggests some more part numbers for me to check.

I then go through several more directories of voter e-rolls,
on directions from the officer, and fail to locate my society’s address in that
those directories. Finally, the guy
calls another electoral officer to enquire where I might have to submit the
form. She tells him that I might need to
go to the Majiwada TMC office to submit this.

The TMC
Office in Majiwada

So I take another auto (after almost 2 hours at the first
place) to the TMC office in Majiwada.
They are on lunch hour (a late lunch).
When the lady finally looks at my form, she is again unsure if I belong
here. She says, why don’t you ask
someone from your society which part they belong to? It will be on the back of their card. I call a couple of people. One of them says that he, too, has just
applied, and doesn’t know; the other says that he got his elector card in
Chembur, a different part of Mumbai, so he has no idea about the current part
in Thane.

After further discussion, the lady asks me, for
confirmation, whether I own my home that is mentioned in the form. I reply that I do not own it but am renting
it. She says, “Oh, that might be a
problem.” I say, “Why?” And she says, “Well, if you rent it, then you
are there for one year – and there is no guarantee that you will be there next
year at election time!”

I try telling the lady that these stipulations are
absolutely absurd, because the voter registration form allows even homeless
people to register, and in fact is very lenient with them – and with homeless
people, you don’t know where they will be tomorrow, let alone next year. They don’t need to submit any proofs of
residence either – they only need to say which street corner they normally
sleep on, and the election officers will come in the evening to verify that
they indeed do sleep there. I ask the
lady, “Why am I being asked to jump through so many hoops when a homeless
person is taken on his word?” She backs off and says
she’s not an election officer, just a teacher who is doing this part-time as
part of government regulations, so while she understands it is absurd, she
cannot help me.

Figure 4: Provisions for Homeless People and Their Address Documentation

The lady shrugs helplessly, but helpfully suggests that I
talk to the big man in his cabin, both for advice about the part to fill in as
well as whether the fact that I am a renter will cause problems. However, he is having his lunch right then,
and there is already a big queue of people to see him, and it has already been
3 hours since I set out to get this card, and my headache and tiredness are
only getting worse. To add to
everything, it is looking bleak for me now and I have lost all hope of getting myself
registered. Unable to wait any longer,
my spirit completely broken, I take an auto rickshaw and come home, fuming at
the injustice of my disenfranchisement.

On the way I talk to the auto driver about my experience. He
agrees with me and says that the poor people do not have to give any
documentation. He also says that he had
applied for his voter ID card 6 years ago and never received it. However, his name keeps figuring in the list
of voters. The last time, someone tried
to stop him from voting because he did not have his voter ID card, but he
successfully stared the man down.

So I came home, lay down a while to recover, and then
decided that if they were not going to let me vote, let me at least write this
article in protest.

Concluding
Thoughts

If these are the kinds of struggles one has to go through
just to get their name registered to vote, then I am sorry, India is a
democracy in name alone. The central,
state, and local governments, for all their “registration drives,” have no
genuine desire in allowing the common man to vote – at least the urban middle
class voter. In fact, they would prefer that the educated, urban middle class voter not vote.

For the really poor voter, things are greatly streamlined –
party workers come to their slums or hutments, give them forms to sign/thumb-print,
submit them on their behalf, and make sure they get their cards in time. And, on Election Day, the rural and urban
poor are trucked to the nearest polling stations, cash and booze are stuffed in
their pockets, and they are asked to vote for the party that sponsors them.

Yes, voters are needed and encouraged in India, but only the
“right” kind of voters. Voters who might
vote their mind are actively discouraged from voting by imposing unnecessary
restrictions on them. Consider the number
of problems that I encountered which point to unfairness:

1.Need to know which “part” I belong to.

a.Why impose this burden on the voter?

b.How many people are aware of the detailed
administrative breakdown of their legislative assembly constituency – to the
extent of knowing which of 353 parts of Thane assembly constituency they belong
to?

c.Should this not be something the election
officials of that constituency are aware of?

2.Need to have proofs for identity. This when the instructions specifically state
that such a proof is necessary only for those whose age is between 18 and 25;
for others they will accept the declaration without proof.

3.Asking for attestation of documents (not
specified with the instructions) for an address proof when it is clearly
mentioned that election workers will come and verify your address by visiting
you at the stated address. This is also
stipulated when the same form also says that homeless people need not supply
anything except state which street corner they normally sleep on; the election
officers will visit the place in the evening to confirm the address. How is it that a person with a job and a home
has less credibility than a homeless person?

4.Telling me that the fact that I rent and don’t
own my residence is a potential problem.
If this is a problem, then most of the people living in Mumbai cannot
vote! This is a deliberate attempt to
put one more obstacle in my path.

It is clear to me at least, from first-hand experience, that
all Indian governments (central/state/local/municipal) lie when they say that
they want a high voter turnout. My
personal experience has been that they deliberately placed obstacles in my path
and successfully prevented me from registering to vote. There is no point passing the buck and saying
that this official or that was guilty.
Ultimately, to me, the people who are in authority – the politicians –
must take the blame. If they set the
right tone and tell their underlings how to behave, none of this would
happen. But the politicians we have are
cynical and care only about their votes, not the people. That attitude simply percolates down to the
Sarkari Karmachari.

I live in a sham democracy and do not trust my governments.

Today my governments disenfranchised me of
the right to vote in the 2014 general elections.

things are certainly better in Chennai. I seem to belong to the kind the blogger is, but could get the Voter-ID issued (and got franchise after four general elections spent in other States) with correct response and dedicated team sitting in the Electoral rolls Section in the Taluq Office.